Charter Schools and Civil Rights

The N.A.A.C.P. should be applauded for ratifying a resolution calling for a halt to the expansion of charter schools.

You say charters give children in poor communities their only opportunity for a superior education. Actually, equity gives children an opportunity for excellent education. Here in Chicago, there are public schools that offer Mandarin, Arabic and Spanish and that support every teacher with a classroom aide.

In the same city, same district, there are schools with one teacher aide in the entire building, no world language classes and no librarian. These schools are not failing: They have been failed.

We are not anti-charter ideologues. We applaud the 20 percent of charters that outperform traditional public schools. We are not advocating the mass shutdown of charters, because closing schools harms children.

What must be acknowledged is the ample evidence that charters as a whole have discriminatory discipline practices, serve fewer English-language learners and children with special needs, and are struggling with the excessive expulsion of their students, who are overwhelmingly black and Latino.

The call by the N.A.A.C.P., Black Lives Matter and the Journey for Justice Alliance for a moratorium on charters and school privatization is in the best civil rights tradition.

JITU BROWN

National Director

Journey for Justice Alliance

Chicago

To the Editor:

I agree with your editorial’s response to the N.A.A.C.P.’s recent proposed (and now officially approved) call for a moratorium on charter schools. You say, “Sound research has shown that, when properly managed and overseen, well-run charter schools give families a desperately needed alternative to inadequate traditional schools in poor urban neighborhoods.”

I’d go a step farther and say the N.A.A.C.P. should not be putting up roadblocks to any form of choice, especially for those who need it most. Even if charters weren’t “properly managed and overseen” in the eyes of your editorial board or the N.A.A.C.P., shouldn’t parents have the right to send their children to whatever school they see fit?

Sometimes there are other considerations besides purely academic ones that parents want the freedom to take into consideration when choosing a school for their child.

TERESA MULL

Philipsburg, Pa.

The writer is an education research fellow at the Heartland Institute.

To the Editor:

Your editorial is wrong to dismiss the N.A.A.C.P.’s argument that charter schools increase segregation. While it is true that charter schools in places like New York City exist in an already woefully segregated environment, the point is that they do nothing to combat that status quo.

Indeed, many charter supporters — and this editorial, too, for that matter — effectively accept segregation as a fait accompli. Compared with more radical solutions to urban educational inequality that focus on integration, charter schools demand nothing from the privileged, largely white communities that benefit from segregation. Viewed this way, the argument for charter schools is that they make a separate educational system somewhat more equal.

If memory serves, the N.A.A.C.P. already proved that separate schools are inherently unequal.

MARK BOONSHOFT

Hartsdale, N.Y.

To the Editor:

As a Paul Wellstone liberal who helped write charter laws in Minnesota and 25 other states, I was delighted by your editorial urging the N.A.A.C.P. to reject a moratorium on these schools. It was The New York Times that pointed out some years ago that the civil rights legend Rosa Parks spent part of the last years of her life trying to help create charters. Strong charters provide valuable options.

As a former urban public school teacher, administrator, parent and P.T.A. president, I think we should empower educators and families through various forms of public school choice. Charters help do that. The New York Times is right.